Nashville: A culinary, musical adventure

We came in search of Nashville beyond the twang and the bro-country, and it didn’t take us long to find it.

A drag performer named China, in a fuchsia dress, belts out “I Will Always Love You” -- lip-syncing the Whitney Houston version of this Dolly Parton original -- to applause and tips, including from little old ladies. It’s our first morning in town -- a Sunday-- and we’ve landed at Suzy Wong’s House of Yum for the weekly Drag’n Brunch. The restaurant’s chef and owner, Arnold Myint, was a “Top Chef” contestant.

We feast on the “Hong Kong Millionaire” -- French fries topped with an egg and pulled-pork scramble helped along by cheese, tomato confit, scallions and Sriracha.

In walk Brian Copeland and Greg Bullard. They are white. Their adorable toddlers are black.

“It’s a welcoming, loving place,” says Bullard of Nashville, where he’s a pastor at Covenant of the Cross church.

My wife and I have lived and traveled all over the country, keeping an open mind about all regions and peoples, but preconceived notions of the South seeped into our perceptions. Tennessee is the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan.

Nashville, Bullard and Copeland remind us, is considered the buckle of the Bible Belt.

The city is also the home of country music, where the Grand Ole Opry got its start 90 years ago and visitors drink up the Disney-esque Country Music Hall of Fame.

But as we learned during our trip, Nashville is more than all that. Urbanism and new residents are transforming the city, even as it upholds great culinary and roots music traditions.

Intimate, diverse music

Let’s start with music. In Nashville, it’s everywhere, intimate and diverse.

Our first music in Nashville? Opera. If you’re there in summer, do what we did: Drive to Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory for “Opera on the Mountain,” featuring some of the finest, lesser-known opera singers in a casual, outdoor venue. There’s something great about hearing artistic director John Hoomes tell you about the finer points of “Turandot” in his Southern lilt. And the singing? Superb.

We sought to avoid country of the “I’m drunk and got my girl and my truck” variety. But we would be foolish to come to Nashville and skip out on the singer-songwriters, bluegrass and roots music that are under country’s big tent.

Although well-known to locals and music aficionados for years, the Bluebird Cafe now draws massive crowds due in part to TV’s “Nashville.” We head there for Monday open-mic night. The music venue shares a strip mall with a bridal shop and a laundry, and by the time we get there in a driving rainstorm two hours before the doors even open, about 100 people wait in line, all huddled under the awning. By showtime, the head count reaches 400.

Unless you really need to see the Bluebird, I suggest you check out any number of other killer open-mic nights around the city, many in out-of-the-way bars such as 3rd and Lindsley. We sit in the balcony, sip RC Cola and rum, and listen to Haas Kowert Tice, a talented young trio. Later, The Lonesome Trio — an acoustic band featuring Ed Helms and two pals — hits the stage with mandolin, guitar, banjo and bass.

Knowledge from southern kitchens

You can now go to almost any U.S. city and get a great meal. But for flavor and simplicity, people staffing the stoves in Nashville know what they’re doing because their great-grandmothers did it and passed it on.

We’ll start at the high end, Husk, where the wines are categorized not by red or white but by soil type. The ratio of hipster beard to clean-shaven here among staff and clientele is roughly one to one. The Bob Woods Murfreesboro ham sits out on the bar, looking medieval. The bartender shaves a thin slice, and my memories of childhood ham sandwiches are obliterated as I savor this new thing -- great ham.

The best Pappy Van Winkle bourbons -- that’s the good stuff selling on the secondary market for $700 per bottle -- is in a case for all to see, behind lock and key.

On the stereo, Lefty Frizzell sings “Always Late With Your Kisses,” because the music here, like seemingly everywhere we go in Nashville, is well curated. We drink craft cocktails and share rice cakes with pimento cheese, and shrimp and grits.

But we enjoy “meat plus 3” at Arnold’s just as much. That’s roast beef or fried chicken plus three choices from the list of sides: green beans, corn, mashed potatoes, collard greens and banana pudding.

Outside of town, we find the somewhat mysterious Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in another crumby strip mall. A bleak green hue colors the walls, and flies buzz around our plates. The ordering process is opaque, borderline hostile, and all the cooking takes place out of view in some shady back area.

And then we bite into the fried chicken. What follows is a fiery crunch of juicy flavor and the experience of addictive heat, a pleasure-pain (this, on the “medium” spicy chicken).

Rebirth of old country

To cool off, we hit up Las Paletas popsicles in the 12 South neighborhood.

In fact, you’ll want to spend some time in 12 South. That’s where we resided in a lovely Airbnb hosted by Emily and Marshall, who spoke enthusiastically about their changing city and the rebirth of old country.

The neighborhood was in a bad way not too long ago, but now is a hotbed of restaurants, bars, coffee shops and boutiques.

On our final night, a Monday, we had a perfectly greasy burger, fries and shake at The Pharmacy. Music on the stereo: “Belong” from Washed Out, which Rolling Stone once accurately described as “zonked out electropop.” On good advice, we hit the dance party at The 5 Spot in East Nashville. The space was hot, dank and dark, and the DJ was spinning oldies and rockabilly, with classic Ed Sullivan performances projected on a screen.

Dancers cut up the floor fiercely to the Drifters’ “Drip Drop,” swinging each other around with practiced exuberance.

By the looks of it, the crowd, the young and the hungry, had come from every boring hamlet in America to find that thing they couldn’t name but sure could feel.

Every city on the make has that bar with a good soundtrack and your crowd, the place where you were sure you would change the world and fall in love, maybe on the same night.

The 5 Spot, in all its sweaty sexiness, is one of those places.

And Nashville is one of those cities.